1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a transfer chamber for a flat display device manufacturing apparatus, and more particularly, to a transfer chamber for a flat display device manufacturing apparatus, having a combination of functions of transfer and load-lock chambers, in which a robot is provided aside from a center of the transfer chamber, a buffer is provided to be driven without interference of the robot, and a aligner is provided to adjust a position of a substrate mounted on the buffer.
2. Description of Related Art
In general, a three-chamber type flat display device manufacturing apparatus has been used. The three-chamber type flat display device manufacturing apparatus has tree chambers: a load-lock chamber, a transfer chamber, and a process chamber. As the size of a substrate increases, there is a problem in that the size of the chambers proportionally increase. Since increase in the size of chamber has a limitation, a two-chamber type flat display device manufacturing apparatus has recently proposed. In the two-chamber flat display device manufacturing apparatus, the load-lock and transfer chambers are combined as a single transfer chamber. Therefore, the two-chamber type flat display device manufacturing apparatus has transfer and process chambers. As a result, the volume of the flat display device manufacturing apparatus can be reduced. Accordingly, a volume of a clean room where the flat display device manufacturing apparatus is installed can be reduced.
Like the transfer chamber of the three-chamber flat display device manufacturing apparatus, in the transfer chamber of the two-chamber flat display device manufacturing apparatus, a robot is provided. The robot has a function of carrying-in a to-be-processed substrate into the process chamber and carrying-out a processed substrate from the process chamber.
As shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, in a transfer chamber 200, a robot 300 is installed. The robot 300 includes a robot arm 320 having a joint member 310 at a predetermined portion thereof and a robot hand 330 connected to one end portion of the robot arm 320. The robot arm 320 rotating around a robot shaft 340 transfer a substrate mounted on the robot hand 330 to a process chamber 100. Therefore, the transfer chamber 200 needs to have at least a volume for ensuring a rotational radius of the robot arm 320.
On the other hand, in case of using the two-chamber flat display device manufacturing apparatus, the process time depends on pumping and venting time periods in a vacuumizing and atmospherically-pressurizing processes. More specifically, after a to-be-process substrate is inserted into a process chamber 100 and the processes are completed, the transfer chamber 200 must be maintained in an atmospheric ambience in order to take out the processed substrate from the transfer chamber 200. In addition, after the processed substrate is taken out from the transfer chamber 200, a new to-be-process substrate is inserted into the process chamber 100, and then, the transfer chamber 200 must be maintained in a vacuum ambience. The process time for the vacuumizing and atmospherically-pressurizing processes increases in proportion to the interval volume of the transfer chamber 200.
Therefore, there has been much demand for reducing the internal volume of the transfer chamber in the two-chamber flat display device manufacturing apparatus.
On the other hand, in the three-chamber flat display device manufacturing apparatus, there is provided a buffer for loading the substrate into the load-lock chamber. Therefore, after the to-be-processed substrate is mounted on the buffer in advance, and then, a robot installed in the transfer chamber takes the to-be-processed substrate mounted on the buffer into the process chamber. In addition, the robot takes out the processed substrate from the process and loads the processed substrate on the buffer.
However, since there is not a separate load-lock chamber in the two-chamber flat display device manufacturing apparatus, there is a problem in that it is impossible to provide the buffer to the load-lock chamber.
As a result, the buffer must be provided to the transfer chamber. However, there are several problems in providing the buffer the transfer chamber in that the buffer must not interfere with the rotation of the robot 300 installed in the transfer chamber 200.
In addition, in the conventional load-lock chamber, an aligner is provided to adjust the positions of the buffer and the substrate mounted on the buffer. Therefore, the position of the substrate can be accurately adjusted and the robot installed in the transfer chamber can transfer the accurately-adjusted substrate into the process chamber.
Recently, as the size of the processed substrate has been enlarged, the flat display device manufacturing apparatus occupies a large volume in a clean room. Therefore, there has been a demand for implementing the two-chamber flat display device manufacturing apparatus by integrating the load-lock and transfer chambers into a single chamber in order to reduce the volume of the flat display device manufacturing apparatus.
In addition, there is a problem in that the aforementioned aligner used for the load-lock chamber in the three-chamber flat display device manufacturing apparatus cannot be used for the transfer chamber the two-chamber flat display device manufacturing apparatus. On the other hand, the position of the substrate has been adjusted by moving the opposite corners of the substrate in diagonal directions with a conventional aligner. However, as the size of the processed substrate has been enlarged, there has been another problem in that the conventional adjusting method of the aligner may cause damage to the enlarged substrate.
Therefore, there is a demand for developing an aligner suitable for the two-chamber flat display device manufacturing apparatus.